The project ‘Buhay sa Gulay’ aims to promote urban farming, reduce poverty, and eradicate hunger, particularly in marginalized urban barangays in the National Capital Region as the Covid-19 pandemic shut down opportunities and livelihood.

By Marita Moaje
Philippines News Agency
Jan 2, 2021

MANILA – The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) scaled up urban farming in Manila after its ‘Buhay sa Gulay’ project had its first harvest of fresh vegetables in St. John Bosco Parish in Tondo, Manila on Sunday.

DAR Secretary John Castriciones said the ‘harvest festival’ was a result of the national government, the local government, the church, the private sector, and the community coming together and uniting for a cause.

Equipment makers with sufficient sales of machines around the country may in theory actually be able to predict, at least to some small but meaningful extent, the prices of various crops by analyzing the data its machines are sending in — such as “yields” of crops per acre, the amount of fertilizer used, or the average number of seeds of a given crop planted in various regions.

By Scott Carpenter
Forbes
Dec 31, 2020

Excerpt:

The combine harvester, a staple of farmers’ fields since the late 1800s, does much more these days than just vacuum up corn, soybeans and other crops. It also beams back reams of data to its manufacturer.

GPS records the combine’s precise path through the field as it moves. Sensors tally the number of crops gathered per acre and the spacing between them. On a sister machine called a planter, algorithms adjust the distribution of seeds based on which parts of the soil have in past years performed best. Another machine, a sprayer, uses algorithms to scan for weeds and zap them with pesticides. Meanwhile sensors record the wear and tear on the machines, so that when the farmer who operates them heads to the local distributor to look for a replacement part, it has already been ordered and is waiting for them.